Chitra Singh

Chitra Singh is a renowned Ghazal singer in India. She is the second wife of the famous Indian Ghazal singer Jagjit Singh Jagjit Singh is ‘Ghazal King’ in Indian music. His >> Read More... , and she has sung many songs along with her husband. But after the unfortunate demise of their son in the year 1990, she quit singing. She is a Bengali by birth, who, despite of absence of any formal training in music, had a ample interest and love for the field since an early age. At school, her performance in academics was average, and after completing her education, she took up a clerical job in Kolkata.

Her first husband was Debo Prasad Dutta, who was an executive in a leading advertising company in Kolkata. She had a daughter named Monica from him, but she also met an untimely death when due to depression, she hung herself at the age of forty-nine years at her home in Bandra. During this time, Chitra used to stay with her daughter at her Bandra residence, so the death came to her as a big and sad shock. Chitra’s first marriage came to an early end due to differences in opinion between herself and her husband. During the same time, she met with Jagjit Singh, who was a frequent visitor to their house as he was employed by Chitra’s then husband Debo as a singer for his advertisement jingles. Chitra and Jagjit quickly fell in and they were soon married.

Jagjit Singh encouraged Chitra’s passion for singing, and it was because of his efforts that she became a famous singer. She kick-started her career as a singer by singing advertisement jingles for her husband, Debo Prasad’s ad agency, along with Jagjit Singh. Both Chitra and Jagjit lived a very difficult life as the society did not accept their marriage easily. Several years after their marriage, they continued to survive on a meager living that they earned by singing jingles for television and radio advertisements. Then after, the couple began to sing live in posh hotels and augmented their living.

Soon after their marriage, Chitra and Jagjit were blessed with a boy in the late 1960s. They named their child Vivek, but his untimely death in an unfortunate road accident shook them both twenty years after his birth. In the mid-1970s, the career of Chitra and Jagjit Singh suddenly rose on the graph around the year 1977, when their album The Unforgettables, a Ghazal Collection was launched by HMV. Some of their most popular songs include ‘Tum Aao Toh Sahi,’ ‘Ye Tera Ghar, Ye Mera Ghar,’ ‘Mitti Da Bawa,’ etc. But sadly, Chitra’s career was short-lived as the death of their son completely disabled her interest in music.